Mumbai: “Reflecting India: An intersectional and longitudinal analysis of popular scripted television from 2018 to 2022” is a new five year longitudinal study led by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (GDI), to which Google Research has extended our AI-powered research support, with the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) at the University of Southern California (USC) as the study’s academic advisor, and the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) as the media studies advisor.

This first-of-its-kind large-scale, multi-lingual study examined media content across five Indian languages – Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu – in 10 scripted television shows that were the most watched between 2018 and 2022, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), India. The sample included a variety of genres such as soap operas, thrillers and mythological dramas. The study sample was organised by GDI and IAA.

The report stated that female characters had more on-screen time than male characters, nearly 55.8 per cent for women compared to 44.2 per cent for men, with both Bengali and Telugu shows providing female characters the highest proportion of screen time, approximately 59 per cent, across all languages.

While female names are mentioned more often in dialogue than male names, unique male names outnumbered unique female names. Perceived female names featured in 55.6 per cent of all instances in which names were mentioned in dialogue, but these names were only 46.7 per cent of the different names featured on the shows.

Young adults (18–33 years old) are seen on screen the most, accounting for 75.6 per cent of all characters present on screen, with female characters over the age of 33 on screen for less time than their male counterparts.

Characters with lighter skin tones were shown 8x more on screen than characters with medium or dark skin tones. However, between 2018 and 2022, the screen time of characters with medium skin tones increases proportionately with a decrease in screen time of characters with lighter skin tones.

When shown on screen, female characters tend to be younger and with lighter skin tones than male characters. 70 per cent of female characters on screen were between the ages of 18 and 32 and had lighter skin tones, compared to 52.9 per cent for male characters, who represented a wider age and skin tone range.

Tamil and Telugu language TV shows present a wider range of skin tones, with characters with darker skin tones occupying more screen time, approximately 23 per cent, than in other language shows, which showed characters with medium or dark skin tones between 13 per cent and 18 per cent of screen time.

Google India marketing director Neha Barjatya said, “Access to digital is crucial to opening up the gateways of information, opportunity and progress, and we’re committed to building products that empower everyone to use the internet with convenience and confidence. Bridging the digital gender gap is core to this, and we’re committed to doing our part to ensure women’s participation in the digital economy is equitable - be they as creators, innovators, or entrepreneurs. As an AI-first company, we’re delighted to power this groundbreaking study and join hands with GDI, SAIL and IAA to build a better understanding of representation in popular media, and inform the industry’s progression towards greater inclusiveness.”

MUSE Google AI research, product manager & lead Komal Singh said, "AI advances in computer vision and natural language processing technologies provide us a powerful computational lens to study human-centric representation in mainstream media, at scale. We were fortunate to have this meaningful and novel opportunity to apply the tech towards studying Indian TV across a breadth of languages and timeframe. This work is an example of Google’s responsible approach to AI at work — using AI technology along with partners in the service of encouraging more transparency, and equity for diverse communities.”